First Corinthians chapter 15 is our text for this morning, verses one and two. If you would turn there, it's printed in your bulletin if you wanna follow that. It's also just a wonderful, wonderful chapter. We're gonna be in First Corinthians 15 for a while. My encouragement to you would be Sometime this afternoon, maybe a couple times this week, read through the entirety of 1 Corinthians 15, and just try to soak in the whole of the chapter. It is one of the truly great chapters of the Bible, and it is one that is rich and full of gospel truth and hope and encouragement for us. So we will be in this chapter for a little while, And it fits very well with this resurrection season that we're getting ready to celebrate. So we'll begin today with the first two verses of 1 Corinthians 15. This is the Word of God. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you. which you received in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Let's pray. Father, the gospel is our hope in life and in death. The gospel is that which we have heard, which we must receive, on which we must stand, and by which you will bring us all the way home. We are saved by faith. from first to last. So would you write these words on our hearts this morning as only you can. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, you may be seated. You ever been around someone who really likes to throw around a lot of lingo? Maybe they think you understand the lingo, the jargon that they like to throw around, or maybe they just don't even think about it, or maybe they like to show off how smart they are and what they know, right? How do you respond to that? I mean, what do you do when someone's throwing around lingo and you don't really understand it, right? How do you, what do you, do you just fake it? Sort of go along, right? The Dilbert comic strips used to be among my favorites. One of the things that Scott Adams would do in the Dilbert comics was make fun of the pointy-haired boss. The pointy-haired boss was a supervisor, a manager of computer engineers. He didn't know anything about computers, right? But he had to manage all these computer engineers. And so he would sometimes get into situations where he doesn't really know the lingo, right? One of my favorites, he walks up to Dilbert one day and he says, I don't see why our webpages need URLs. Get rid of them. And Dilbert looks at him and he says, not sure of himself, the boss asks, does that make any sense? And Dilbert responds, yes, it's brilliant. Give me a month and I'll have them all replaced with universal resource locators. And of course, Dilbert bought himself a one month in office vacation because his boss doesn't get the lingo, right? Well, in the Christian world, we use a lot of lingo too. And a word that I've already used several times in the last few minutes is this word gospel. Right? We talk about the gospel. What do we mean by that? We talk about being saved. Well, how often do we clarify exactly what we're being saved from or how? We talk about redemption. but we don't define what or who is being redeemed exactly and by whom and for what purpose and at what cost. Even concepts like faith or believing in Jesus or coming to Jesus can be stated as if it's obvious exactly what we mean and sometimes people can listen to us and sort of scratch their heads wondering what all this lingo is about. Like gospel. Is it a type of music? There's gospel music. But not all, did you know not all Christian music is gospel music? Right? Gospel music typically refers to either black gospel music or to southern gospel or country gospel music. So is it a particular sub-genre within the Christian music world? How about a gospel t-shirt? Or a gospel bumper sticker? Right? What exactly is this gospel? Well, the word gospel comes from the Old English Godspell. Right, and it actually means good spell, or good news. It's the good news. And that's a translation from the Greek word, which is euangelion, where we get our word evangel, evangelist, evangelical, which means good news. So the gospel is the evangel, it is the good news, or the good message. An evangelist is someone who proclaims the good news, the good message. And an evangelical is supposed to be someone who believes the good news, the good message, and who is shaped by that good news. The gospel is the good news of salvation and the good news of Jesus Christ. It is, in short, the announcement, the proclamation of what God has done in Jesus Christ to save us from separation from him and from condemnation by him because of our sin, our rebellion against God. It's the story of how God has made right all that sin has made wrong in the world. It is to be proclaimed, Received, believed, trusted as the truth from God that tells us who he is, what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do to save all those who trust in him from sin and death and judgment. Now the first thing Paul says about the gospel to the Corinthians is that he wants to remind them of it. He says, now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel. These people are already Christians. They've been Christian for some number of years, probably five or six years at this point. Paul is the one who started this church, right? He's the one who first brought the gospel to them. Apollos came later and preached the gospel with particular persuasive effectiveness. but they need, they still need to hear the gospel. In fact, the word that Paul uses that's translated here as remind is simply the word make known to. I would make known to you the gospel. And the reason why we translate it as remind is because, of course, Paul's already preached the gospel to them, and so he's making it known to them again. He's recalling it to their minds or reminding them of it. Why would Paul need to remind them of the gospel? Why do we need reminders? because we're prone to forget, right? And the more important something is, and the more prone we are to forget it, the more surely we need reminders of it. For the Corinthians, they needed to be reminded of the gospel because they had become puffed up with pride. They had a profound lack of love for one another. They had confused notions about what made someone truly spiritual. and they were more in love with their spiritual gifts than they were with the Lord who gave them, or more importantly, with the people that they were given those gifts to serve. So we need to ask ourselves, what tends to crowd out the preciousness of the gospel from our hearts and minds? So that we need reminding of its glorious goodness. What is it that tends to work its way in and push the gospel to the side? I firmly believe that every married couple should regularly attend weddings together. You should not, if you're a married couple, you should not look for an excuse to get out of going to a wedding. You should look for a way to get to that wedding that you've been invited to and be there. Why? Because it's a great reminder, right? You sit next to your spouse, you hold hands, you watch the whole thing, you look at your wedding ring, which is another great reminder, and you remember The love you have, the vows you made, the commitments you want to keep, the love that you want to nurture and grow because in life, other things push those things out. Children, puppies. Our puppy's wonderful, he's not doing that really, but stress, right, work, financial problems, miscommunications, misunderstandings can all crowd those things out. So what about the gospel? You know, when we first come to faith in Jesus Christ, if we do so rightly, we do so because we have a deep awareness of our own sin and our need for a savior. We know how fallen we are. We know how short of God's holy standard we come. And we know that we can't save ourselves. And that Jesus alone is mighty to save. And so we turn to Jesus in faith. We trust in him, not ourselves. But what happens as we continue the Christian life? Well, it's easy to forget, why? Well, I think one of two things happens most frequently. Either we grow complacent about our sin and our need for Christ so that we basically sort of minimize our sin, justify it, make excuses for it, sweep it under the rug, say it's not that bad, it's not that big of a deal, or we convince ourselves that we're actually doing really well because we've become effective, what I call sin managers. Right? We've learned how to manage our sin so that it doesn't cause us too many problems, right? We can contain, confine, and minimize the damage rather than confessing, repenting, and being forgiven. So whether you're sort of callous about your sin and don't really care and just kind of gotten lazy, or you've become effective at sort of sin management so that you can appear very righteous and you can convince yourself that you're very righteous, what gets lost? What gets lost is this very basic truth. John Newton said it well, the guy who wrote Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. He was a slave ship captain, you probably know his story, before God rescued him and called him into ministry. Well, as he got older, and he was working on his sort of spiritual autobiography and also working against the slave trade, his eyesight was failing and his memory was failing and he was finding it increasingly difficult to do the things that God had called him to do. So one day he said, my eyesight is almost gone. My memory is almost gone. but I do remember two things, that I am a great sinner and that Jesus is a great savior. And boy, if there's anything to remember at the end of your life, that's the gospel. That's what we need to be reminded of. And complacency or self-righteousness can sort of crowd that to the outside. Jesus, in Revelation 2, he writes to the church at Ephesus, which was a very active church, a very sort of earnest church. But Jesus says this to them, I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. So these were good, faithful Christians. They were enduring hardship, they were bearing up patiently, and they were doing it for the sake of the name of Jesus. but they had forgotten the love they had at first. Their hearts were no longer overwhelmed by the mercy and grace of their Lord. And so Paul says, I want to remind you of the gospel. The second thing he says is this is the gospel that I preached to you. the gospel that I preached to you. Now what's interesting is the New Testament actually has seven different verbs that are translated preached in the English. It's one of the things when you study the original languages, you realize a lot of stuff gets sort of, you know, squeezed out in translations. But there's seven different words and there's one That literally means to preach the gospel or to evangelize. And it's the verb form of the word for gospel, so it's euangelizo. And so literally, and this is why our Bible translations don't do this, because it would make awful English, but literally Paul says, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I gospelized to you. Or I would remind you of the gospel I gospel-proclaimed to you. or the evangel that I evangelized to you. And none of that sounds really good in English, so we just say the gospel I preached to you. But Paul's talking about a particular kind of preaching, because there are different kinds of preaching. There's some preaching that's more teaching. There's some preaching that's more just declaring what God has decreed, right? There's some preaching that's more encouragement and exhortation. It's designed to build you up. This is specifically gospel preaching. And he says, when I was with you, that's what I did. I preached the gospel. I gospelized you. What does that look like? Well, we saw this earlier in our studies in 1 Corinthians. So if you have your Bible, you flip back to chapter two, you'll see what it looks like to be committed in ministry to gospel preaching. In 1 Corinthians chapter two, verses one to five, Paul says this. And I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom. but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." Paul tells them what he told them, the only thing he told them, and why it was that that was the only thing he told them. When he brought the gospel to them, he resolved to know among them nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. the person and work of Jesus, who Jesus is and what he has done to save us. And he left everything else aside. Paul was a very educated man. He was highly educated. But he said, I'm not gonna get, because I don't want you to have confidence in human wisdom. And that's exactly, of course, what the Corinthians were doing. They were starting to put their confidence in human wisdom. They were starting to put their confidence in people who were the most eloquent, the most ornate in their speech. But Paul focused on Jesus Christ and him crucified because he was trusting in the spirit and in the power of the gospel to make effective the message. He wasn't trusting in himself. There's another interesting place where we see this word, this verb, euangelizo, and it's on the first Christmas, a very familiar passage in Luke chapter two. In Luke chapter two, on the night when Jesus was born, in the fields outside of Bethlehem, an angel appeared to shepherds. You know the story. Do you remember what the angel said to them? Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. That's Luke 2, verses 10 and 11. The phrase, I bring you good news, is the exact same verb that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15. I preached the gospel. I bring you good news." What was the angel bringing to the shepherds? The good news of great joy for all the people, that is for all the people of God for all time, and that is that Christ the Lord had been born a Savior. Christ the Lord is a Savior born to you. His name is Jesus. Mary was told months earlier, you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. His name is Jesus, which means salvation. Those of you who've been going through the Psalms with me, you've learned that Jesus' name in Hebrew is Yeshua. and that is the exact same word as the word salvation. So whenever you're reading the Old Testament and you read about salvation or the salvation of God, it's the name of Jesus. He is the literal embodiment in person of the salvation of God. And that's why to preach the gospel is to preach Jesus, and to preach Jesus is to preach the gospel. Now, how is this good news? What has Jesus come to save us from? Well, to understand this, it's really the whole story of the Bible that unfolds the story of the gospel, the good news. But it's a story that unfolds, and follow me on this, as a good news, bad news, worse news, good news, better news, best news story. Really how the Bible unfolds it. But to understand the story, you first have to understand what the problem really is, right? Because if I were to walk up to you and I were to say, Steve, I've got really good news for you. Your house is standing intact. And you might say, thanks. Appreciate that. But if I said, Steve, I have really good news for you. There was an arsonist who showed up at your house and he had doused all the outside of your house with gasoline and he had a torch and he was this close to setting the whole thing ablaze when somebody stopped him and your house is intact, then he'd be like, Wow, okay, I get it, that's good news, right? So we need to know the bad news in order to know the good news, and one way to think about the bad news is to answer the question, what's wrong with the world? What is the real problem in the world? Is it that we don't have enough money? Is it that we don't have enough education? Is it that the right people are not holding political office? Is it that the right policies are not being passed? What is the problem in the world? My favorite answer to that question came from G.K. Chesterton. G.K. Chesterton's a British writer. He wrote The Father Brown Mysteries. He was a great influence on C.S. Lewis. And the story is told that the Times of London wanted to run a special edition. And so they sent out an inquiry to all the famous writers in Britain, asking them to write back to them in response to the question, what is wrong with the world today? And G.K. Chesterton's reply was the shortest. He wrote, dear Times of London, In response to your inquiry as to what is wrong with the world today, I am yours truly, G.K. Chesterton. It took the editors at the Times of London a minute to figure out what he had said. The Bible says that you and I are the problem in the world because we've rebelled against God. You see, the Bible begins with good news. Genesis one and two, good news. God created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power. He made them orderly, he made them beautiful, he made them full of life, and he made them very good. And the crowning jewel of his creation was humanity, alone made in his image, made to reflect his character to creation and to rule over creation under his loving lordship. But the bad news, is that people rebelled against God. They chose to try to overthrow God and take his throne rather than serve under him over creation, under his loving lordship. In doing so, they brought sin, death, and alienation into God's very good creation. On the day of their rebellion, they died spiritually and they began to die physically. They became mortal. The worst news is that nothing people could ever do could make right what they had broken in their sinful rebellion against God. God gave them good laws, showed them how to live in the Ten Commandments. But because people were the problem, people could not be the solution. And the whole Old Testament is really the long and often painful story of the repeated failures of God's people to be what God had created and called them to be. If you ever read through the whole Old Testament, you're kind of exhausted by the time you get to the end, and you're really ready for the New Testament. And you're supposed to feel that way, because nothing else works but Jesus. And that's the good news. The good news is that Jesus, who was actually promised throughout the Old Testament as the substance of the gospel comes into the world with those angels pronouncing, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people. He entered into the world. God made man, true God made true man. Conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the sinless Son of God, the only qualified mediator who could fix the sin-broken relationship between God and his people. You see, people had broken the world, and so a person needed to fix the world, but no people could do it. God had to become a man to do it. So for 33 years, Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life. He never sinned once in his thoughts, in his words, or in his actions. He always honored his father, he always obeyed him, and he embodied what it meant to be the image of God in the world. He embodied what Adam was supposed to do, but even better. He lovingly submitted to his father and he exercised dominion over creation. He healed the sick, he fed the hungry, he calmed the storms. He exercised dominion over the dark enemy of God's people by casting out demons and setting the oppressed free, and in doing so, he brought in the kingdom of God in his own person as the king, and he fulfilled all righteousness in his own obedience, and then, When the time had come and all had been fulfilled, Jesus willingly took upon himself all of our rebellion, all of our sin, all of our brokenness, and all of our wrong. As 2 Corinthians 5.21 puts it, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that through him we might become the righteousness of God. And that's why the essence of the gospel is Jesus Christ and him crucified, because it was there on the cross that Jesus, having fulfilled all righteousness, took all sin upon himself and satisfied the wrath of God. Romans 5.8 says, God demonstrates his love for us in this, that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. and then having taken the full weight of the sin of his people on himself on the cross, Jesus died, was buried, and then rose again on the third day. He rose again, he was victorious over sin and death. He is the ever-living, undying Savior. He ascended into heaven, he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty as the only man who has not only perfectly obeyed God, not only taken all of our sin upon himself, but is the only man who has defeated death and who lives forevermore, and that is why he is the only Savior, because he's the only one who's done the work of salvation. He's the only one who's finished it from beginning to end, and that's why the message of the good news is the message of Jesus. That's the good news. Here's the better news. What Jesus did to save us is offered freely to us, to be received by faith in him, not by doing good works, which we can't do apart from him anyway. God's not saying, okay, Jesus did all the work for your salvation, now you measure up and I'll give it to you. That would leave us without hope, and there are some Christians who think that way. But the better news is that because of Jesus, we are saved by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, not because of our works. For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2, eight and nine. And the best news, well the best is yet to come. For the Christian, we know two things. Whenever we face sin or suffering or sorrow in this life, we can say with confidence, this too will pass. And we know that the best is yet to come. Because the best news is that when Jesus comes again, as he has promised to do, He will raise and fully redeem all of those who have trusted in Him, making us just as He is. He will give us new bodies that are undying bodies that are made just like His glorious resurrection body. He will give us perfect human souls that are just like His perfect human souls, which means we won't think about sin anymore. We won't want to sin anymore. We won't care about sin anymore. We'll only care about glorifying God and loving one another. we will be free and we will be whole and that's the best news. So it's a good news, bad news, worst news, good news, better news, best news story. The good news, God made a very good world and made people in his image as the crowning jewel of creation. The bad news, people made in the image of God rebelled against him, committing cosmic treason, plunging the world into darkness and death. The worst news, nothing people do or try to do It's a response that says, that's a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo that has nothing to do with my life. Thank you very much. And it is a rejection of the gospel. But people also respond positively to the gospel in ways that are wrong and in ways that are right. A positive response to the gospel that's actually a wrong response is to say Jesus lived the kind of life that we should all live. I'm going to be just like him. And we should want to be just like him. But you see, we can't. And for us to think Jesus is my example, what would Jesus do? Let me live like him is to put all the focus on our good works and on our obedience and maybe if Jesus obeyed so well that he earned eternal life, I can obey so well like him and earn eternal life like him too. That's Jesus as the example, but that's not Jesus as the savior. The only right response that is a God-pleasing response is to trust the Savior to save you. To trust the Savior to save you. to receive the one who is the substance of the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ, by trusting in him, believing on him for salvation, believing in him as your Lord and Savior, to belong to him by faith, to say, I am his and he is mine, to say, yes, Lord, I believe. That's what it means to receive the gospel. But Paul doesn't stop at telling the Corinthians that they have received the gospel. He tells them that the gospel is that in which you stand. Kids, did you get that connection to the text? Yes, Evelyn, good. It's the gospel in which you stand. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. all other ground is sinking sand. You see, it's not enough to say, once upon a time, I believed. I went to Christian summer camp. A revival service was held at my church. I heard a good sermon. I saw Billy Graham on the television screen. Now kids, that's really dating me. Billy Graham used to come on television on CBS and preach the gospel to America. Remember those days? All right, so it's not enough to say I did back then, I trusted. We have to say I am standing on Jesus alone and I am being saved. He says the gospel is that in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast the word I preach to you. My favorite picture of what this looks like in action is in the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter three. which is another one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. I've got a few thousand of them, but. Philippians chapter three, not really, but. Here's Paul telling us, showing us what it looks like for him to stand on the gospel and to be saved by the gospel. And notice it's not a passive, complacent, comfortable life. The first thing he says in Philippians 3 is, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. What does he mean by to write the same things to you? It's the same thing he opened up chapter 15 with. I would remind you of the gospel. I'm going to write to you about the gospel. I just wrote to you about the gospel. In chapter 2 of Philippians, it's a great gospel chapter, and then chapter 3 is the great response to the gospel chapter. So I'm going to write you the same things. And then he says what to look out for. And what he's telling them to look out for is self-righteousness. self-righteousness that he calls putting confidence in the flesh. He says look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh because we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh. There are still so many Christians who would teach you various ways to put confidence in the flesh. Beware. Another way to summarize what it means to receive and stand in the gospel is to use the words of Paul here in Philippians 3.3, and that is to worship by the Spirit of God, to glory in Christ Jesus, and to put no confidence in the flesh. So you worship God, you glory in Christ Jesus, you put no confidence in the flesh. He goes on and he says this. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to the zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss. for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. So to receive the gospel, is to count everything as loss for Christ. Nothing I have matters one ounce before God, only Jesus matters. My education doesn't matter, my income level doesn't matter, the neighborhood I live in doesn't matter. The job I do doesn't matter. How often I've been in church, how long I've been in church, how active I've been in church doesn't matter. Only Jesus matters. I'm gonna count all things as lost, and to stand is to continue to count everything as lost compared to one thing, the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. He says, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. And listen to what he says, this is stunning. This is a guy who's, literally writing the Bible by the power of the Holy Spirit as he says this. And listen to what he says in verse 12. Not that I have already obtained it. or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The Bible, in a couple different places, compares the Christian life to a race, and I believe that's the imagery that Paul has in mind here in Philippians as well. Where's the finish line? At the end of the race. We press on, and we run through the finish line. What does that mean? It doesn't mean to be self-righteous. It means to pursue Christ because Christ has laid hold of us. To want to know Christ more because Christ has made himself known to us. It's to say, I'm not home yet. My fight is not finished. My race is not run yet. And I must press on. And I press on by trusting in Jesus and by seeking to get to know Jesus, which means I need my time in the word day by day. I need time in worship. I need to gather with the saints on the Lord's day morning to begin my week with the encouraging refreshment of knowing Jesus through gathered worship. I must press on. I must press on. Not in self-righteousness, not in good works, but in faith in Jesus Christ, in trusting in Him. And then Paul ends these opening verses with a sober warning. He says, if you hold fast the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. Unless you believed in vain. What does it mean to believe in vain? Literally it means to have a faith that is empty, hollow, or inauthentic. Another way to say it is, it is to make a profession of faith in Jesus without possession of Jesus in your heart. To say I trust Jesus without actually knowing him. If Jesus is Lord and Savior on your lips, but not Lord and Savior of your life, then the Bible says you have believed in vain, and it's not about how good of a person you are. It's not about how good you are at sin management. Because let me tell you, there are some expert sin managers who don't know the Lord. is whether you know him or not. This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven. He said, on that day, when he appears to finish the work of redemption and to bring judgment and everlasting salvation for all of his own, he says, on that day, in Matthew seven, many will say to him, not a few, but many will say to him, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name do many great works? And he will say to them, depart from me, "'I never knew you.'" Notice he's not going to say, you didn't work hard enough. Notice he's not going to say, you weren't good enough. He's not going to say, I'm disappointed in your level of obedience. Our sin doesn't surprise God. That's why Jesus went to the cross. But he will say, I never knew you. So that's the question you have to answer this morning. Do you know Jesus and does Jesus know you? That is the essence of what it means to receive the gospel, to stand in the gospel, to hold fast the word of life. It is to know Jesus and to be known by him. That begins by crying out to him for salvation from your heart and to say, Lord, I need you to save me. and I want to know you. And then as you grow in knowing him, Paul says he doesn't think he knows him perfectly yet. He wants to grow in knowing him. You grow in knowing him by growing in the places where he has revealed himself. In his word, in prayer, in worship, in fellowship. Not as a way of checking off your spiritual to-do list and getting your report card straight, but as a way of knowing him. and being known by Him. God sent His Son to save forever all those who trust in Him. That's the gospel in a nutshell. You say, what is the gospel? After all this, what's the gospel? God sent His Son to save forever all those who trust in Him. And so do you trust Him? Do you trust Him? Let's pray. Father, what a gift you gave when you gave your Son. What unspeakable love, what amazing grace, what complete and perfect redemption you gave when you gave your Son. His name is salvation. because salvation is found in no one else, and there is no other name given under heaven among men by which we must be saved. I pray that everyone here and everyone watching online would know you, Lord, through your Son, Jesus Christ. And if they don't know you, that even now, even now as we sing amazing grace, they would cry out in their hearts to you and say, Lord, I need you, save me, I want to know you. Make me yours forever. I pray, Father, that you would do this work by your Holy Spirit.